In Memory of Stanley Cavell

While driving back from a party through the warm London night last Monday evening, I decided to tell my girlfriend about Stanley Cavell’s interpretation of . The story does not reflect any better on me, if you know the essay in question. It centers on a description of the Macbeths as a portrait of a marriage gone perfectly, metaphysically wrong, one where the sharing of thought and passion has become ghastly and vampiric. But the play was on my mind because I was due to see it the following night, so maybe I can be forgiven my conversational choice. The production felt strikingly close to Cavell’s account. So I was thinking the next day about emailing him about it; instead I heard the